Bulgaria is the newest, poorest and probably the worst
governed member of the European Union. Its economy is growing, its politics is
collapsing and its public is totally frustrated. Bulgaria is also the EU
member-state where the public is the most sceptical that democracy is the best form
of government, one where only 21% agree that the country is
governed according to the will of the people.

A famous Italian movie director who visited
the country in the 1970s found it a great setting for small family dramas but
unfit for major political tragedy. He could turn out to be wrong. For Bulgaria is also now (symbolically at least) at
the heart of Europe, and thus a place where Europe's
future could be shaped. Indeed, there is a sense in which the future of the EU
enlargement process will be decided as much in Sofia as in Dublin: for if the
Republic of Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon treaty (in its referendum on 12
June 2008) makes it institutionally impossible for the union to enlarge
further, an indefinite failure by Brussels to press Bulgaria to change its bad
governance practices will make it politically impossible to open the door of
the union to new members.

It is in this context that the significance of
the European commission's report on Bulgaria's progress in fighting
corruption and organised crime - released on 23 July 2008 - can be understood.
The report is a striking document for someone who has a sense of the workings
and the style of the European commission; for in it, Brussels has adopted unusually harsh and
political language. The report even threatens Bulgaria with suspension of up to €1 billion ($1.55
billion) in pre-accession aid, and to bar two Bulgarian state agencies from
handling EU funds.

Furthermore, a parallel report by the European
Union's anti-fraud unit (OLAF) - leaked a week in advance of the commission
document - states that there are "powerful forces in the Bulgarian government
and/or state institutions" who are not interested in punishing corruption. This
report goes as far as explicitly mentioning the Bulgarian president in
connection with his acceptance of political donations from corrupt networks. In
short, the problem of Bulgaria is not the existence of corruption but the
suspicion that the government and the president are part of it. For the
European commission to publish such a report amounts to a "small revolution".

Ivan Krastev is
chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria.
He served as the executive director of the International Commission on the Balkans,
chaired by Giuliano Amato.

The reaction of the socialist-led government
in Sofia is one of shock and confusion. It tries to trivialise the change of
tone, while at the same time accusing Brussels of being selective in its
toughness. In its view Bulgaria is not the only corrupt country in the European
Union, and probably not the most corrupt; so why has Bulgaria alone become the
target of the commission's anger? Why has the commission been so silent over
the latest legislative changes in Italy that serve the special interests of
prime minister Silvio Berlusconi? What about other countries where nefarious
practices are common knowledge? Is the commission aware that its hardline stand
amounts to direct interference in the domestic politics of a member-state, and
that as a result it could help bring to power populists and even extremists? In
short, the Bulgarian government has found its arguments - but it is losing its way
in the process.

Conspiracy theories will not help the
Bulgarian government to grasp its problem. It is not that Brussels keeps its
bad feelings about Bulgarian socialists in reserve for use on appropriate
occasions, nor that Bulgaria was selected to be a whipping-boy to set an
example; rather, Brussels simply has no other option but to be severe in this
instance. For if the commission is unable to convince member-states that it can
effectively respond to the governance crisis in one of the union's newest and
most problematic countries, the implication is that enlargement should be put
on hold for ever. A failure by Brussels to discipline Sofia will mean that
Belgrade or Skopje (to name but these) should say farewell to their dream of
joining the union. As historians will testify, most of the great political
projects have died not of heart-attack but of digestion problems.

The
failures of success

In this wider frame, the commission's tough
line towards Sofia is also intended to answer the central question that
Brussels today faces: is it true that when a country enters the European Union
the commission loses any meaningful leverage over its domestic politics?

In Brussels's view, the commission has
leverage and it can prove it. An eventual success for the commission's strong
line towards Bulgaria will reinforce the argument of advocates of enlargement
that the an accession country's transformation does not and should not stop when it
enters the club. Entry to the EU does not mean the end of leverage, but a change
in its nature - towards a greater focus on the commission's direct outreach to
the society and the empowerment of social groups eager to promote change. Thus,
in contrast to the accession period when the European commission contributes to
a model of change that can be best described as "reforms without politics", its
ambition now is to generate a demand for a genuine reformist politics.

This shift of focus, however, also casts
retrospective light on the role of the European Union in the pre-accession
period. For an unintended consequence of the omnipotence of the EU then was a
twin process: the depoliticisation of the policy-making process and the growing
gap between the political class and the voters. At the time, the power of the
commission looked almost unlimited, but its impact was not always benign.
Governments quickly learned to play the accession game, benefiting from the
fact that they served two masters: selling all unpopular policies as "made in
Brussels", while smuggling into the agenda their own pet projects - thus
increasing their unaccountability at both ends.

As a consequence, publics became used to their
powerlessness. Voters realised that they could change the government but not
the policy. The opposition and civil society self-censored their criticism of
government corruption in fear that this could slow the accession process and
delay European Union membership.

In the Bulgarian context, the outcome is a
country where a huge majority of the public profoundly mistrusts almost all
Bulgarian public institutions and politics in general. But what makes this
predicament even deeper is that the current dismal state of public
participation is the result not of the failure of EU policies in the accession
period but of their success.

The
Brussels sandwich

It is in the context of this legacy that the
report of the European commission suggests that a new strategy is taking shape - one that breaks
with the accession legacy where the government is the only trusted interlocutor
for the commission. The new commission approach is to politicise institutional
failures, rather than depoliticise them as before. This brings into the
game a new player: Bulgarian public opinion. The opinion polls have convinced
Brussels that the public perceives the commission's pressure not as an act of
colonial arrogance (as local nationalists and populists like to portray it) but
as an opportunity for much needed and desired changes in the quality of
governance in the country. It is perhaps appropriate in this regard that on the
very day the findings of the report became known, the opposition in Bulgaria
asked for the resignation of the government and new elections.

In general, what the commission is doing is an
attempt to replace the politics of conditionality (the famous "Brussels carrot")
with the politics of pressure (a "Brussels sandwich") - where corrupt governments find
themselves pressed between angry publics and an uncompromising commission.
Anti-corruption, in this perspective, turns out to be the common language and concern shared by the
public and the commission.

This is a promising change in the commission's
new strategy, but there are three major risks on the road. The first and most
obvious one is that finding itself in the corner, the Bulgarian government will
use all its resources not to fight corruption but to fight the commission, by
mobilising nationalist sentiments among the public. This strategy does not work
for the moment, but the situation can change. Today only 16% of the Bulgaria
public claims that how government governs is not Brussels's business. But who to
blame for the lost money from the EU funds will be one of the key questions in
Bulgarian politics in the coming years.
Also on Bulgaria
and Europe in openDemocracy:

The second and more profound risk is to
underestimate the fact that the Brussels sandwich assumes the coexistence of a
sick government and a healthy society - while what is in crisis in Bulgaria is
not simply post-communist regimes but
post-communist societies. Bulgaria
suffers not just from an incompetent and corrupt government but also from lack
of administrative capacity and civic energy. The opposition, while active in
exposing government's corruption, is weak in suggesting clear alternatives.
Bulgarian society displays symptoms of what the political anthropologist Edward Banfield
has defined as "amoral familism" - the behaviour that maximises the material,
short-term advantage of the nuclear family, assuming that all others will do
likewise. It has repeatedly failed in its efforts to pursue public interest
and self-organisation.

The third and most surprising risk is that making corruption the
central issue in Brussels's strategy can also backfire. In my book Shifting Obsessions Three essays in the
Politics of Anti-Corruption (Central European University Press, 2004) I tried to demonstrate that anti-corruption
campaigns in east-central Europe are doomed to fail. They contribute to the delegitimation of political
elites and public institutions. Even non-corrupt governments do not have
incentives to start anti-corruption campaigns because they do not have opportunities to convince publics that they are successful in curbing graft and corruption.
Moreover, at the sharp end of the boomerang is the fact that anti-corruption accusations can be a deadly weapon in
dirty political wars. It is sad but true that for many in Bulgaria the best
definition of corruption is "other people's networks".

The
catalyst of change

Bulgaria and Ireland illustrate the twin
challenge that the European Union faces today. They demonstrate the twin nature
of the EU's legitimacy crisis. In the western part of the continent, national
publics are questioning the legitimacy of EU institutions and protesting
against the democratic deficit in the union. In the eastern part of the
continent, national publics tend to trust EU institutions more than their own
institutions and to demand a more interventionist commission. What bothers
Bulgarians is not the democratic deficit of the commission but the
rule-binding deficit in Bulgarian government. It is not easy to address these
two different concerns at the same time. Donald Rumsfeld can turn out to be right in the end: there are two Europes - "the old Europe" that is mistrustful of the
commission's interventionism in national politics and the "new Europe" that is demanding such an interventionism.

For the moment the European debate is
preoccupied with the democratic deficit of European Union interventionism - the
Irish challenge. But the Bulgarian challenge - the other legitimacy crisis -
can turn to be a tougher one. The European commission can be the catalyst for
change but it cannot bring the change on its own. The Bulgarian challenge
should not be neglected.